Orion

[SaxonViolence]

I watched a Video recently on "U" Tube.

 

Freeman Dyson's son George spent three years researching the "Orion Project" that his father was a key player in.

 

He wrote a book of that name.

 

A couple of things about the presentation stood out:

 

{1} Films of a rather Large Orion Model flying quite high and free under the the impetus of several successive C-4 Explosions.

 

{2} The fact that the project was cancelled in 1963.

 

{3} The time-table that many in the Project firmly believed in:

 

"The Moon by 1965. Mars by 1970."

 

I think that by 1963, "Moon by 1965" was a bit ambitious.

 

"Moon by 1970. Mars by 1975" (or 1980) Seems conceivable.

 

Hear me out:

 

One of the scientists said,

 

"We would have Scorned the notion of sending a dozen folks to Mars for two or three weeks.

 

"Try more like 50 Scientists who'd spend at least two years there and might very well leave a small manned base behind when they left.

 

"There was also some talk that if we went to Mars, we might as well take the same ship to at least one Jovian Moon while we're at it."

 

He said that would only turn a 5 year mission into an 8 year mission.

 

So yeah, I know we got two men to the Moon in 1969.

 

These dudes would have sent a double bus load in 1970 and we'd probably have several permanent Moon bases by now.

 

{4} These Dudes said that with the type masses that they were working with...

 

"Orion" influenced Space Gear would not be Fragile Aluminum, High Strength Polymers...

 

{And some folks Prophesy a future for Plywood in some types of Future Craft.}

 

HuH-Ugh!!!

 

Picture Steel Girders and Boiler Plate or at the very least, relatively thick Sheet Steel.

 

When and if Orion got that far, the Ships would have been Designed and Built like Nuclear Submarines—Probably built by the Builders of Nuclear Submarines.

 

******************** ***************** *********************

 

Now time for Some of My Slap-Dash Extrapolations and "What Might Have Been".

 

{1} I've been wanting to Write an Alternate Timeline Novel for some time, where the Timelines are Identical...

 

(insofar as it is possible to tell)

 

Until The other Timeline has a Limited Nuclear Exchange during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

 

{This isn't a Civilization-Ender. The net destruction is comparable to WWII—or less...

 

But it serves as a definite diverging point.}

 

I wanted to imagine an America much like ours—but Far less populous (approximately 75 million Americans—The Nuke-War being only one of the causative agents).

 

I wanted to imagine the "Two's" being far better at Biology and Genetics than us.

 

Having largely avoided our Lemming-Like tendency to Adopt Transistors for everything—they have made much fuller and ingenious uses of both Vacuum Tubes and Parallel Processing...

 

{And Biological Computers built up from stem-cell Neurons...}

 

Due to the Lower Population and the lack of many Gun Laws—Going back at least to no GCA 1968...

 

The Two's are considerably more free and prickly about their liberties.

 

And once the Two's Alternate World is Discovered, it quickly becomes public knowledge and Travel between the two Alternate Timelines is almost ridiculously easy...

 

Far too easy to institute any sort of Quarantine—or even controlled borders.

 

But my Imagined World missed something to make it Compelling...

 

{2} But what if the Cuban Missile War served as the Catalyst to jump-start the Orion Project?

 

Can we imagine a Sparsely Populated America Supporting a Massive System of "Boilerplate" Space Platforms; O'Neill Colonies; Moon Bases; Mars Colonies; etc.

 

Imposing a Brutal and Crushing "Pax Americana" on the whole Solar System...

 

While nonetheless allowing American Citizens more Freedom both at Home and Abroad than most of us Enjoy here in our World?

 

{If that sounds odd—The Romans were brutal bastards who excelled at conquering and subjugating their betters.

 

But there were Numerous Perks to being a Roman Citizen...

 

Not that a "Pax Americana" would be quite as bad as the "Pax Romanica".

 

Americans are inherently morally superior to the Old Romans.

 

We are always the "Good Guys" regardless of who we go Against, While the Romans were always The "Bad Guys".

 

Kinda like The English in Later Centuries...}

 

{3} NASA has always been very "Safety Conscious".

 

That is Admirable, but you couldn't run a Nineteenth Century Railroad on that basis...

 

Not even a Mid-Twentieth Century Passenger Airline.

 

**** Happens.

 

We can imagine Space Building being almost Brutally risky in the Two's Timeline...

 

Especially in the Early days.

 

America is on a War-Time footing and the survival of the nation is believed to be contingent on "Taking The High Frontier".

 

An occasional Industrial Accident is seen as not only inevitable, but a very worthwhile trade-off.

 

{I picture at least one Very Sturdy (and Armed) Geo-Synchonous Space Platform for every Time Zone—i.e. Twenty-Four...

 

As well as a few extra as well as a few Polar Orbiters and Whatnot.}

 

 

 

**************** **************** ******************

 

So okay cool.

 

Americans at home live much like Appalachian Highlanders here, during Kephardt's youth..

 

{Not a Bad Thing.}

 

Abroad on the Earth (population only slightly above one billion...) They live Largely Like Olde Tyme British Colonial Officials.

 

On the Colonies in Space, there is a lot of Hostility and outright Nihilism towards all forms of Authority...

 

While the Soldiers in the Space Program function much like the more Fascist of Fiction's "Star Troopers".

 

So how does all that bear on what it's like to take your Pick-UP to the Nearest Gate (Hundreds in every state—many as Interstate Turn-Offs)...

 

Join up with some "Kin" on the other side.

 

{Two's are big on Kin and can trace who you'd be related to, if your linage was of Two...

 

And they treat you like Family...}

 

And spend two or three weeks coon hunting, drinking Two-side Cokes—still made with cane Sugar and botted in Returnable glass bottles...

 

And gazing at the Space Platforms at Night, through telescopes or Binocculars...}

 

 

THOUGHTS???

 

 

Saxon Violence

Edited August 19, 2013 by SaxonViolence

[JMJones0424]

If I were to summarize your post - and correct me if I'm wrong - it's that why did we get to the moon in the 60's and still haven't gotten to Mars? I think what your analysis is missing is the mass of fuel necessary to get a habitation module from Earth to Mars and back. The rocket equations are a *****. Perhaps it would be better to envision going to the moon and back as being similar to traveling by foot to the nearest town and returning the next day, while going to Mars and back would be like traveling across the Atlantic in the 1500's... except that we know for a fact that there's nothing there to support life.

Edited August 20, 2013 by JMJones0424

[SaxonViolence]

I think you're missing the point.

 

Orion used Nuclear Bombs both to Launch and to Continue to Propel Itself.

 

It had about 10 000 times the Payload carrying potential and far more capability for sustained acceleration than anything we've worked on Before or Since.

 

Sober Physicists like Dyson and many others are convinced—even over 50 years later—that we were within a very few years of having a working Orion when that Jackass Kennedy cancelled the Project.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4k_YZAXSEI

 

 

Saxon Violence

 

Had you even heard of the Orion?

Edited August 20, 2013 by SaxonViolence

[JMJones0424]

Yes, and I find the concept both ludicrous and politically untenable. There are other high Isp nuclear drives that are both easier from an engineering standpoint and don't have all the political problems. However, you are correct, I missed your point in skimming through your post. Single spacing and using paragraphs would make your posts more reader friendly.

[SaxonViolence]

Did you watch the Video?

 

Once we decide to Start our Space Program, there is a rather high "Threshold Tonnage" that needs to be launched into Near Earth Orbit" before we can start to reap large profits. Just launching the required tonnage will take agonizingly long.

 

Using Orion inside the Earth's atmosphere is probably not tenable long-term. However we are at a watershed period in history, where if we don't get on the ball and get our Space Program in gear soon, depletion of non-renewable natural resources and other factors may lock us into the sort of "Hand-to-Mouth" existence that makes investing in Space forever beyond our means. In a very real sense, it is "Now or Never."

 

Just a few Orion launches could launch enough tonnage to cut a generation, maybe even two generations off our Time-Table to start living big from mining the Asteroids, etc.

 

Given what is at stake, the amount of Radiation Released into the Atmosphere is an acceptable trade off.

 

Never even mind the potential for Interplanetary missions.

 

When the project was conceived, there were any number of valid technical objections. They were addressed one by one. When the free-flying model flew via C-4 Explosions at the end...

 

{They show tethered flights several times during the presentation, but only show the free-flight at the end.}

 

All the technological problems were solved. It was largely a matter of building the hardware.

 

Then Kennedy dropped the ball for all mankind.

 

At least back then, most high-ranking Military Men were very hard-nosed realists with a solid background in Engineering.

 

Note the description of how stunned they were when they saw the free-flight.

 

Also Dyson and over a Dozen other Veterans of The Manhattan Project solemnly state that the system was on the verge of Completion.

 

Politicians are a scourge on humanity and progress. No, Orion may never be Politikally Korrect. I have a large problem with the word "Ludicrous".

 

 

 

Saxon Violence

[JMJones0424]

No, I didn't watch the video. It's an hour long and it covers what I view to be farcical means of propulsion. If it's important, would you care to summarize?

 

The fact remains that nuclear bombs have a tremendous amount of political baggage involved. They are neither necessary nor convenient for inter-planetary propulsion. What is your view of other high Isp nuclear drives, such as the NERVA?

[Racoon]

I still think the most important thing on a mission to Mars is not so much the propulsion systems, it's with the Astronauts themselves... 0 Gravity for many weeks will diminsh their muscular/physical capabilities quite considerably.

 

Robots really do seem the best option for exploring space, thus our need to preserve Earth.

[CraigD]

Being a “child of the space age” – born in 1960 – I’ve known of project Orion since childhood. Being an avid SF reader, I’ve read many stories depicting such system, from the “classic”, design sketched in some detail in the 1950s to modernized version. Having only recently become aware of their existence, I’ve not read George Dyson’s (another child of the space age, born 1953) 2002 Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965, nor his 2003 Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship which I understand are good science history on the subject, but look forward to. Unfortunately, neither is available in electronic form from a major ebook seller, so I may have to content myself with paper. :(

 

Though I’ve not read George Dyson’s books nor watched his youtube video, I’m pretty sure the claim

Sober Physicists like Dyson and many others are convinced—even over 50 years later—that we were within a very few years of having a working Orion when that Jackass Kennedy cancelled the Project.

isn’t correct. Nearly every history I’ve read, including those cited in the above linked Wikipedia article, conclude that The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 effectively outlawed actually building and testing an Orion. Also, by the time the project was canceled, the main design thinking in it was that an Orion would be lifted in pieces by many reliable chemical-fueled rockets and assembled in orbit, a project that would take many years and much money.

 

:QuestionM Do you have a source for this claim, SV? A link, or a time mark in a video?

 

US president John F Kennedy, is generally considered to have been an strong proponent of the US space program, and to have played an important role in garnering sufficient public support for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs to assure their approval by the US Congress. His famous 1962

“we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”

speech remains one of the most recognized and quoted promotions of spaceflight by a politician to this day.

 

This wikipedia section has a summary and some links on Kennedy’s policy and influence on the development of spaceflight.

 

No, I didn't watch the video. It's an hour long and it covers what I view to be farcical means of propulsion. If it's important, would you care to summarize?

I, too, lack the time to watch long videos. I prefer written info. However, the 26 second, 56 meter altitude 14 Nov 1959 flight of the 1 m tall “putt-putt” test model, using conventional chemical high explosives, is IMHO a must-see for space enthusiasts, and a fun view for everyone. It can be watched in the first 90 seconds of

.

 

I don’t think it’s accurate or fair to call project Orion “farcical”

 

The Orion nuclear propulsion concept is simple, and arises intuitively from technologists experience in the 1940s and 50s with the success of the US in building many atomic fission bombs for military use. I believe it was also driven by awareness of the difficulties experienced in the 1950s and 60s in US nuclear thermal rocket programs (the Rover and NERVA programs) – that is was in large an exercise in “out of the box” rethinking of how best to build a nuclear-powered rocket.

 

Though the Orion scientists and engineers were much less well supported than their NERVA counterparts, who in turn were much less well supported than the “right stuff” teams that worked on the more conventional US and USSR space programs, they were serious and capable, and their work worthy of study. Orion is a thought-provoking design idea, which I think, under some unlikely but not impossible circumstances, might actually fly: if humankind had a sudden need to fly a very high delta-V spacecraft in a short amount of time. We do have a lot of, and a lot of experience with, nuclear bombs.

[SaxonViolence]

Yes,

 

I'm continually being frustrate at the dragging pace of Video.

 

I will look for a time line.

 

However as they presented it:

 

A} Orion could not be a NASA Project because parts of it were classified.

 

B.} The Air Force took the project over. The Air Force tried for a good long while to keep the project scientific but,

 

C.} About the time that the Test flight was presented, some military knotheads really started to ramp up the Miltarization.

 

Some Doofus thought that with Orion, he could send a rapid deployment force of 200 Marines across the atlantic in two hours.

 

I'm not terribly opposed to "Blood and Guts" stuff; but it seems to me that is what Troop Carriers and over seas bases are for...

 

D.} Kennedy went to the center where Orion was being developed and someone had a Volkswagen-Sized model that include Banks of Nuclear Missiles as well as Nuclear Artillery.

 

The Damned thing must have looked like something from "Star Wars".

 

The very next day, Kennedy shut down Orion due—it was felt—to a political reluctance to put "Nuclear Weapons in Space".

 

Robert Heinlein was at least one intelligent individual who was vehemently opposed to the Nuclear Test Ban.

 

At any rate, it is quite probable that if the US had proceeded (with non "Deathstar Looking") Orions, that they could have shut down objections with Hairsplitting and "Shut up boy! I'm tryin' to DO Something Here."

 

On another topic:

 

I need to read more about NERVA.

 

I know that Jerry Pournelle was very distraught when they cancelled the Program.

 

 

Saxon Violence

 

 

And I won't get the book anytime soon, at the price.

 

I'm still trying hard to buy my own copy of "Cold Reading" which costs much less.

[JMJones0424]

I need to apologize. For whatever inexcusable reason, my grumpy-old man complex kicked in and I entirely missed both the context and point of this thread. I have re-read all posts and viewed the linked Youtube video. While I still maintain that the Orion drive is both ludicrous and farcical in this time, in this political climate, as a science fiction topic, it is clearly viable. Something relatively similar was used in Neal Stephenson's Anathem. (Fair warning- while I like to think of NTS as one of my favorite authors, Anathem is my least favorite of his works. Unless you are a fan of his style, it could take considerable effort to finish the book.)

 

To be convincing though, SV, you'd have to give me more than just that the US decided to say "f.u." to the world and proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of money to promote interplanetary travel using the single most inflammatory drive imaginable. Especially after a small-scale nuclear exchange. Unless the US ended up being the overwhelming victor of the confrontation, I find a hard time believing that the Orion drive would be any more politically tenable in that scenario than it is now.

[Moontanman]

This old science fiction novel give a pretty good account of how an Orion type spacecraft would be built and used... btw if the Orion space craft had gone to Jupiter every one would have died, they had no idea about the radiation environment there.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall

 

The United States secretly builds a large, heavily armed spacecraft propelled by nuclear bombs (a real concept commonly known as Project Orion). While an earlier implementation of the idea was ruled out due to environmental reasons and the danger of radioactive contamination, in the desperate situation facing humanity such considerations are cast aside. The ship is named after the Biblical Archangel Michael, who cast Lucifer out of Heaven.

The Michael launches and battles through small enemy "digit" ships in orbit. Though seriously damaged, she pursues the alien mothership. One of the space shuttles carried aboard Michael rams the Fithp ship, seriously damaging it, and slowing it down enough for the Michael to catch and attack it, dealing additional damage.

 

It is a great book, the aliens are not only non human in appearance they are non human in their thinking as well... The USA space ship uses 16" battle ship guns...

[CraigD]

This old science fiction novel give a pretty good account of how an Orion type spacecraft would be built and used... btw if the Orion space craft had gone to Jupiter every one would have died, they had no idea about the radiation environment there.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall

The United States secretly builds a large, heavily armed spacecraft propelled by nuclear bombs (a real concept commonly known as Project Orion). While an earlier implementation of the idea was ruled out due to environmental reasons and the danger of radioactive contamination, in the desperate situation facing humanity such considerations are cast aside. The ship is named after the Biblical Archangel Michael, who cast Lucifer out of Heaven.

The Michael launches and battles through small enemy "digit" ships in orbit. Though seriously damaged, she pursues the alien mothership. One of the space shuttles carried aboard Michael rams the Fithp ship, seriously damaging it, and slowing it down enough for the Michael to catch and attack it, dealing additional damage.

It is a great book, the aliens are not only non human in appearance they are non human in their thinking as well... The USA space ship uses 16" battle ship guns...

I loved Footfall! :thumbs_up Its story was what I was had in mind by “unlikely but not impossible” in

Orion is a thought-provoking design idea, which I think, under some unlikely but not impossible circumstances, might actually fly: if humankind had a sudden need to fly a very high delta-V spacecraft in a short amount of time. We do have a lot of, and a lot of experience with, nuclear bombs.

It also IMHO had one of the best cover illustrations in SF history, by SF Hall of Famer Michael Whelan:

The mini-elephant-looking fellow clutching a mirror and an assault rifle in his 2 branching trunks is one of the “doesn’t look or think like a human” aliens Moontanman mentions.

 

Not to spoil the novel for anyone who’s planning to read it for the first time, but what I meant by a “sudden need” is, in this 1994 novel, preventing the forceful enslavement of humankind by aliens slightly more scientifically and technologically advanced than ourselves, and the mini-elephants are not/b] those aliens.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t have a print or electronic copy of Footfall handy, so can’t check, but it may be where I encountered the first mentions of an Orion spacecraft that used magnetic induction and electric storage for the system’s characteristic giant shock-handling spring, rather than the purely mechanical, most likely hydraulic scheme that appeared in the ca. 1960 General Atomic design sketches. Regardless of the history of this newer design feature, I think if an Orion is ever flown, it will use it.

[Turtle]

...

Unfortunately, I don’t have a print or electronic copy of Footfall handy, so can’t check, but it may be where I encountered the first mentions of an Orion spacecraft that used magnetic induction and electric storage for the system’s characteristic giant shock-handling spring, rather than the purely mechanical, most likely hydraulic scheme that appeared in the ca. 1960 General Atomic design sketches. Regardless of the history of this newer design feature, I think if an Orion is ever flown, it will use it.

 

Shock notwithstanding, what I don't understand is how anyone expects that everything in the immediate area of a nuclear explosion won't be vaporized? In that respect a nuclear bomb is nothing like conventional explosives, is it? :ebomb: